Caregiving Legal Basics: Essential Documents and Tasks

Being a caregiver means getting legal paperwork in order

Caregivers often put off the “legal stuff” because it’s confusing and it can be difficult to know where to start.

But when you’re caring for an older adult, an important part of the job is making sure essential legal documents are in order. That allows someone to help with financial or medical decisions when necessary.

Getting the paperwork done before it’s needed will save time, money, and headaches down the road.

To help you get started, we found a helpful free guide from ARAG that gives an overview of caregiving legal basics. It uses simple and straightforward language to cover key issues like planning for when your older adult will need someone to speak for them, housing options, end-of-life choices, and more.

We explain what’s in the guide and how it helps with important legal issues related to caregiving.

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Guide to caregiving legal basics helps you get started

We like this free guide because the information is broken up into sections that are easy to read and understand.

We also like that it gives unbiased information that helps you understand which legal documents are needed, why they’re important, and how to get started.

The guide includes:

Checklists

Definitions of key terms

Suggested questions to help you start sensitive discussions

Tips on how to choose representatives, save on taxes, etc.

Page 4 of ARAG’s caregiver guide

How the guide helps with important caregiving legal issues

This caregiver legal basics guide covers 6 sections. Here’s what each of them includes:

Estate planning

What an estate plan covers

Which documents are needed and why

A 6 step checklist for how to create one

Working with an attorney

What to expect from hiring an attorney

How they’ll work with your older adult and the family

Planning for incapacity

How a legal guardian could take over when someone is not able to make their own decisions